Bot is the new app. What we saw with the rise in number of iOS and Android devices 4-5 years back is exactly what we are going to witness now with the rise in usage of messaging apps. After you have an answer to how your brand can use a bot and whether you should build one, you might be considering that it is worth exploring. But being a startup, it is possible that your developer has got low bandwidth or maybe you don’t have a developer working full time with you.

(Image: Facebook messenger by downloadsourcefr/CC BY 2.0)

If that is a deterrent for you, you should continue reading. With bots growing into a bigger opportunity, some companies are offering simplified tools to allow people who don’t have the technical expertise to be able to build bots easily. Here are the tools you can try to build a bot for your travel brand:

1- Chatfuel

Chatfuel, a Y Combinator company is allows you to make a bot for free and deliver your content in different ways. The bots can pull data from a variety of platforms and deliver to the user in a well-structured format. Forbes and TechCrunch are two of the big names using Chatfuel to power their bots. It supports two of the most popular platforms, Messenger and Telegram.

Website: chatfuel.com

Founders: Dmitrii Dumik and Artem Ptashnik

Location: Russia

2- Botsify

Another interesting platform if you are looking to build a bot is Botsify. It supports Facebook Messenger only but with Messenger being one of the biggest chat platforms (that support bots), you won’t miss out on much. I found the process to be slightly complicated when compared to others but nothing that should pose a challenge. It allows you to embed APIs so that you can pull content from other sources and integrate easily into your bot.

Website: botsify.com

Founder: Usama Noman

Location: Pakistan

3- Api.Ai

This tool comes from the team which is behind Speaktoit, the Siri like virtual assistant for Android. Now the team is bringing the same power to masses and it has got lot more to offer than many others in the list. Creating a bot takes a bit more effort than others but with the kind of features, it is very well justified. It can be integrated with Facebook, Slack, Telegram, Kik and many other platforms, even Alexa and Cortana. It is free for limited queries or if you are just looking to play around but is paid beyond that.

Website: api.ai

Founder: Ilya Gelfenbeyn, Pavel Sirotin and Artem Goncharuk

Location: United States

4- ManyChat

This is one of the simplest tool if you are looking to create chat bots for Facebook Messenger. While the features appear to be slightly limited, digging around for a while will reveal that it can do a lot more than it appears at first glance. It can easily integrate with your Facebook pages and start working immediately.

Website: manychat.com

Founder: Mikael Yang

Location: United States

5- Converse.Ai

With support for a large number of chat platforms including Slack, Facebook, Telegram and many more, Converse is the way to go if you are looking at more than just the most popular platforms. Apart from responding to customer queries by understanding natural language, it can identify and route the queries to right people and also enable for customers to complete transactions over messaging.

Website: converse.ai

Founder: Tony Lucas

Location: United States

6- Morph.Ai

With an objective to connect technical infrastructures of apps or web services with the conversational touchpoint of company, Morph already supports building bots for multiple platforms and plans on adding more. You can choose to integrate APIs, design conversation flows and then use the service on your favourite platforms. It is still in early days and you can sign up for access on their website.

Website: morph.ai

Founders: Pratik, Vipul, Niyati and Abhishek

Location: India

7- Motion.Ai

Motion.AI is another US based startup that is working on giving the bots a push with artificial intelligence. They offer a flowchart to guide through the process and simplify it. It is free to use for upto 2 bots with limited number of messages. However, if your bot is expected to be flooded with messages, consider investing in one of their paid plans depending on the volume.

Website: www.motion.ai

Founder: David Nelson

Location: United States

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There is no denying the fact that chat apps are among the most used apps on our mobile devices and that is why, travel brands are exploring chat as a medium to communicate with the customers. Major brands are integrating chat features in their own app or are using platforms like Messenger to serve their customers on chat.

With this trend sure to gain momentum, a young startup based out of Mumbai is building an end to end travel assistant for almost everything you might need related to your travel. Go Hero Go aims to simplify the travel booking process by eliminating the need of selecting options from drop down menus and enables the user to simply type in the requirements to make the bookings. The system utilises artificial intelligence to learn the preferences of a traveller so that the only the most relevant options are served.

Go Hero Go was founded by Snehal Dhruve and Bineet Desai. Snehal has got strong experience of working on AI based technologies while Bineet carries expertise in Business Development and Relationship Management.

A large fraction of the users are already acquainted with chat as a medium so getting them used to it isn’t a challenge and thus making requests is easy. It also allows for the information to be communicated in a more direct manner as compared to voice and for the system, text requires less processing time resulting in faster responses.

Talking about the other startups that have emerged in this space, Bineet shares that there are players like Assist, Haptik, Wishup and few more but none of them stand directly against Go Hero Go. A number of them offer wide array of services with travel forming one minor part while few others are relying primarily on human operators to serve the customers. Go Hero Go uses technology as the primary communication medium.

Bineet Desai, CFO & Head-Business Development and Snehal Dhruve, Co-founder & CTO

The system uses AI to process the customer request based on NLP within a chat to ensure quick responses while keeping the staff requirements to a minimum. The requests are taken care of by the backend booking engine which uses multiple APIs to fulfil bookings. A CRM system collects the data about customer behaviour to offer tailored recommendations without flooding with a sea of options. The payments are handled by third party solutions including options like PayPal and Instamojo.

The Android and iOS apps are live along with the web version of Go Hero Go. However, to further increase adoption and eliminate the need of downloading the app, they are working on integrating the system with other chat apps like Messenger, Telegram, Line, Kik and even on making it accessible through SMS. This would make it easier for them to get new users to try out the service and the users will prefer it over keeping an extra travel booking app on their devices.

Travel Startups Incubator managed by Matt Zito recently invested in Go Hero Go. Bineet shares that the association would not only add value with the mentorship and industry knowledge but also help them enhance their partnerships and networks thus helping business development.

The travel chat segment is a big opportunity and we will certainly see the entry of many new players. Go Hero Go has a first mover advantage being the first of its kind service in India and as they further strengthen their technology and automate more of their processes, the barriers of entry for others will continue to rise. It will be interesting to see how this segment shapes up in India.

You can find more details about Go Hero Go here: Website | Android App | iOS App

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Flight metasearch engine Skyscanner has always been quick to adopt new trends, be it is a new marketing channel or a new technology. Earlier Skyscanner had made headlines with their innovative 24 hour Periscope campaign when Periscope was relatively new and gaining traction among users. Now, only a few weeks after Facebook opened up the Messenger platform for third party developers, Skyscanner has introduced a chat bot which allows travellers to look up and book flights with ease without having to search through the website.

As of now, the bot only offers flight search services although Skyscanner’s app offerings also include hotel search and car rentals. The bot is available in English only for now and the currencies are limited depending on the language (English US or UK).

The bot would ask you to provide your destination, source and dates of travel, essentially the data you would enter while searching for your flight on their website, without visiting the website or downloading the app. The bot also carries the ‘search everywhere’ feature from the Skyscanner website, so it will also recommend destinations depending on your source airport.

The bot is quick to respond to queries however, you have to keep them simple. Precise responses which are the direct answers to the bot’s questions will take you to your desired flight results but the bot isn’t able to process detailed inputs very well. For instance, when we adhered to the one or two word inputs, the bot offered the desired search results but as soon as we tried using a complicated phrase, including the source, destination and travel date, the responses weren’t as expected. The bot follows a hierarchy and you have to adhere to that for now.

Complicated phrases aren’t handled very well at this point

This could be because it is still a very young product and the functionality is limited at this point. Judging by how Skyscanner has previously embraced technology, we can safely assume that we will see lot more features being added to this Messenger bot. Skyscanner also offers hotels and car rentals and they might also offer these through the chat bot in near future.

Chat bots are being seen as the next big thing in travel industry, a fact that Skyscanner highlighted in their blog post. The recently introduced bot will not only open up a new sales channel for the brand but also help them position themselves as a tech savvy brand which is ready to adapt quickly to serve the customers better.

Apps were the hottest topic of conversation in the tech industry until a few years back but over time, the average number of apps an individual uses didn’t rise considerably. According to the data shared by Lee McCabe, Global Head of Travel, Facebook during Phocuswright India, the average time spent by users per month on apps increased significantly from around 23 hours to 37 hours from 2012 to 2014 but the average number of apps used continued to be almost the same. Most of the time is spent between a handful of apps, primarily social media apps and messaging services and that is where the brands want to be visible. With 900 million monthly active users on Messenger, it offers wide reach and unlike an app, a bot is available for use immediately without the time or storage requirement.

The Skyscanner bot is easily accessible through their Facebook account. You can head to m.me/skyscanner to take the bot for a spin.

Also read: Should travel brands start exploring chat bots immediately

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